Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 21:31:14 -0500 (EST)
From: Kevin Cabral <kcabral-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: M-TH: Contested Exchange and Libertarianism


	Justin Schwartz has, in his sharp criticism of Chris'
class-struggleless society, hinted at a primary contradiction in wage
labor, formulated by Marx and more recently illustrated by Bowles and
Gintis, and that is the *contested exchange*. The idea of a contested
exchange inherant in wage labor quite simply illustrates the way that the
interests of capitalist and worker diverge politically because of the
nature of wage labor; consequently this poses a problem for the
libertarian concept of the nightwatchman state. 

	This contradictory nature of wage labor is found in the plain fact
that when a capitalist pays a wage to employ labor he advances to sum to
pay abstractly for labor-power, the ability to do work. Thus the
capitalist's interest is to get labor to do more productive and intense
forms of work for the wage he pays them, while it is in the interest of
workers to resist this intensification of the working day. Since workers
do not have democratic resistance options available (i.e. workplace
democracy) in the relationship of wage labor they must turn to political
resistance which necessarily confronts the will of capital through
government, unionism, strikes, et cetera. This political struggle between
workers, and capitalists thus is, I argue, a necessary consequence of wage
labor.
				
	Capital wants to use the machinery of the state to its advantage,
while labor wishes to use it to theirs. Therefore this contested exchange
brings into existance a dynamic state whose violence can potentially be
captured and executed in the interests of either party to various degrees:
modern liberal democracy. Any libertarian 'night-watchment' formulation
will have to confront this criticism, and throughly explain how libertarian
society eliminates labor resistance (and democratic resistance) to the will
of capital that emerges from the contested exchange without resorting to
the anti-democratic force of paramilitaries and Blanquist dictatorship that
I think libertarian government must resort to in its defense of "libertarian"
property rights. 
  
Kevin 
Columbus, Ohio




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